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Google Summer of Code 2011 is over, and all of our students have successfully finished their respective projects. All of the code is available in Git repositories, but not all of it is going to be part of the next released versions of GEGL and GIMP. Here is why.
Both new tools, Seamless Clone and Warp Transform, as well as new size entry widget are too late to become part of 2.8. We are planning to make them part of 2.10, when they are better tested for reliability and usability. The OpenCL project needs more work to become part of GEGL’s main development branch. However the project to port more GIMP filters to GEGL operations is already part of master branch in GEGL and will be available in the next version of GEGL.
Some of our students are taking a well deserved break from GSoC or are back to study, while others continue hacking on their projects. Michael Muré recently started work on undo/redo support in the Warp Transform tool and works now on extending GEGL’s capabilities regarding transformations. Barak Itkin continues working on his Seamless Paste tool and intends to make it usable with larger images as well as fix some bugs and make it more flexible. Victor Oliveira keep working on his OpenCL/GEGL project as well.
We are pleased to announce availability of a new development version that brings us closer to GIMP 2.8. This version is packed with important new features and improvements.
The most visible changes in 2.7.3 are the fully working single-window mode, including working session management, and the introduction of a new hybrid spinbutton/scale widget which takes less space in dockable dialogs.
For a complete list of changes since 2.7.2 please refer to NEWS page, while the release notes summarize changes in the whole 2.7.x series.
Please note that the whole 2.7.x series of versions is considered unstable and is not recommended for use in production even though it might just work for you. Our intention is to make development versions available for passionate users who can provide useful feedback to help us fix bugs and streamline implementation of some of the new features. The upcoming v2.8 also introduces a huge amount of API deprecations and additions that have the potential to break existing 3rd party scripts and plug-ins. Please file bugs for all plug-ins and scripts that do work in v2.6, but don’t work in 2.7.3. A migration guide for developers will be provided when v2.8 is out.
There is still a lot of work to do on v2.8. Please refer to this page to find out what the current estimation of v2.8 release is, and what bugs you can help us fixing to make the new stable version happen sooner.
While GEGL gradually replaces GIMP’s old core, it’s time for us to consider long-term strategy for improving performance. The trend these days seems to be a combination of multithreading, GPU-side processing and networks. Most of that can be handled thanks to OpenCL standard by Khronos Group.
Back in 2009 we already had a Google Summer of Code project by Jerson Michael Perpetua who introduced basics of GPU-side rendering to GEGL. This year we have even more progress. Another GSoC student, Victor Oliveira, has been working on support for OpenCL in GEGL since late May. If you are interested in details, please read his latest report.
The upcoming GIMP v2.8 isn’t going to do GPU-side rendering and processing, because it’s simply too late for this development cycle. The next version, v2.10, is going to feature all of our other GSoC projects this year and more API cleanup. With v3.0 we are doing the final switch to GEGL, and this is where we currently expect OpenCL support in GEGL to be mature enough to be used. For more details please refer to our feature roadmap.
We aim to make GIMP a state of the art image editing tool. We know that our past approach to development of new versions didn’t exactly encourage contributions that helped making it happen. This is why starting with v2.10 we are switching to a shorter development cycle. In other words, new stable versions will have less new features and will get released sooner, helping us to process queue of incoming new features much faster.
All major new features are now being developed in dedicated Git branches so that you could easily merge our latest upstream changes into your feature branches, and we then could easily review and merge your new features into upstream. If the new proposed workflow sounds appealing to you, and you are interested to contribute to the project, please let us know.
In the mean time we are preparing another development version of GIMP with quite a lot of fixes gathered over last 4 months. Stay tuned for more news.
We are glad to announce that all of our Google Summer of Code students have passed midterm evaluation. All the code is being maintained in respective Git branches of GEGL and GIMP.
As a reminder, this year Google Summer of Code is bringing us two new tools, Seamless Clone and Warp Transform, several GEGL operations, support for OpenCL based rendering in GEGL, and a new widget for size entry.
We also reviewed projected date of GIMP 2.8 release, and it still looks like end of 2011. This version is going to introduce dramatic user interface improvements as well as a multitude of new features including new Cage Transform tool and much more sophisticated painting options.
Two new books on GIMP have been published recently. “GIMP 2.6 Cookbook”, in English, by Juan Manuel Ferreyra is a collection of straightforward instructions that will help you accomplishing typical design and photography related tasks. This book is packed with answers to get you preparing great images with the GIMP immediately.
“GIMP”, in French, by Olivier Lecarme and Karine Delvare is, on the contrary, a complete user guide and a reference to GIMP features. The book explains basics of digital imaging, retouching photos, creating animations, preparing pictures for publishing on the Web etc.
We are pleased to announce that we have five projects accepted for Google Summer of Code 2011 program:
We are wishing our students success with their respective projects and we are looking forward to working with them.
We are pleased to announce availability of a new development version that brings us closer to GIMP 2.8. This version is packed with important new features and improvements. For a complete list of changes since 2.7.1 please refer to NEWS page, while the release notes summarize changes in the whole 2.7.x series.
Please note that the whole 2.7.x series of versions is considered unstable and is not recommended for use in production even though it might just work for you. Our intention is to make development versions available for passionate users who can provide useful feedback to help us fix bugs and streamline implementation of some of the new features. The upcoming v2.8 also introduces a huge amount of API deprecations and additions that have the potential to break existing 3rd party scripts and plug-ins. Please file bugs for all plug-ins and scripts that do work in v2.6, but don’t work in 2.7.2. A migration guide for developers will be provided when v2.8 is out.
There is still a lot of work to do on v2.8. Please refer to this page to find out what the current estimation of v2.8 release is, and what bugs you can help us fixing to make the new stable version happen sooner.
One of the most common questions we keep hearing is when the next version of GIMP is released. While it’s difficult to define exact dates, it is possible to estimate how far away a new stable release from now is based on amount of work that has to be done. We intend to make development of GIMP as transparent as possible, so Martin Nordholts, our core team developer, created a web app that adds previously missing alpha channel to development process. If you want to track progress of v2.8 at any given time, please use this page for reference.
We have also finally revived the development wiki that contains introductional information for newly joined developers. Since we are still quite short-handed, that documentation should come in handy for anyone willing to make GIMP 2.8 a reality sooner than currently expected.
This year we are participating in the Google Summer of Code program again. If you are a student who is willing to improve GIMP and be financially rewarded ($5000), please have a look at the list of project ideas, pick one or come up with your own idea, then join #gimp IRC channel or gimp-developer@ mailing list and introduce yourself.